


Impeccable Taste, Rubbish Timing

by the_wordbutler



Series: Motion Practice [39]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, but that is not the story, i refuse to spell ana's name any other way, jack thompson ends up married, motion practice universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 17:26:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6619678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleven years ago, Peggy met one of her best friends, a charming man named Daniel Sousa.  But as with so many parts of Peggy's life, they ended up like two ships passing in the night.</p>
<p>Most days, she's comfortable with that ending to their non-existent love story.</p>
<p>Her friends feel very differently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impeccable Taste, Rubbish Timing

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, I know nothing about the U.S. Marshal Service.
> 
> A full summary of MPU jobs for the _Agent Carter_ characters can be found in the end-notes, along with links to recent tumblr-only MPU material. Also, there is a single MPU headcanon from at least a year ago that runs contrary to this work. I've chosen to ignore it. Forgive me. (The headcanon is not about anything important, but just for the record.)
> 
> And thanks as always to my beta-readers, Jen and saranoh, for their hard work and dedication. And in Jen's case, for digging up the contrary headcanon so I know to ignore it.

"You keep it up with the sad eyes, English, and the rest of Table Six might think they’re lousy company."

Angie punctuates her none-too-subtle criticism by poking Peggy in the forearm, and Peggy wrinkles her nose even as she nudges her friend back. Sometimes in her darker moments, she thinks back to their college years and wonders why exactly she befriended a loud, relatively fearless actress like Angela Martinelli.

Then, Angie charms a bartender into a free round of drinks—or, better still, an entire bottle of tequila—and Peggy remembers.

A gaggle of strangers wanders in through the doors to the banquet hall, and Peggy capitalizes on Angie’s momentary distraction to snatch a roll from the bread basket. Like everything else about him, Jack Thompson’s wedding reception is perfectly polished artifice, right down to the flower-shaped pats of butter. Peggy enjoys hacking the tiny rose into even smaller pieces before smearing it on her bread.

She barely resists the urge to muss up the centerpieces (all fresh-cut flowers and satin ribbon, clearly chosen by the newly minted Mrs. Thompson) out of spite. But since petty acts of vandalism are generally not welcome at friendly parties, she shoves a chunk of roll in her mouth and behaves herself.

And maybe folds her place card into a rather ugly paper airplane, just for fun.

"Well?" Angie presses as the newcomers all sidle up to the bar. "You gonna admit that you’re sad-eyed and sulking, or do I need to drag it out of you?"

Peggy rolls her eyes. "I assure you that whatever my eyes are, they are neither sad nor sulking." When Angie raises her eyebrows in a silent challenge, she sighs. "They’re not. I just find it slightly infuriating that Jack decided he needed to segregate his college friends into two groups: those who work for the federal government and those who chose literally any other career. Like we’re second-class stragglers for not heeding Uncle Sam’s sacred call." 

"And when you say infuriating, you mean it’s a monumentally douchey move, right?" Peggy bites down on the edge of a laugh, and Angie shrugs. "Hey, look, I know you’re all about playing polite—stiff upper lip and everything—but since I barely have a dog in this fight, I’ll call a snobby spade a spade. Besides, you know he only invited me because I’m friends with the rest of you."

Peggy stops dismantling a butter daffodil (or some other elaborate flower) to frown. "You and Jack were friends at university, too."

Angie snorts. "Three months of necking in a study room does _not_ a friendship make." This time, Peggy definitely laughs, and Angie beams at her. "But while I’m here to take advantage of all the free food and booze—maybe even pack a little doggie bag for breakfast tomorrow—you don’t really have an excuse. In fact, last time I checked, you wanted to punch Jack in the face."

"To be fair," Peggy replies, "I’ve wanted to punch him since our second-year historiography class." Angie huffs a laugh, but she also crosses her arms over her chest. Expectantly, Peggy thinks, and she tears off another corner of her roll to avoid answering the real question. 

Except her eyes drift over to the nearby Table Five—and, perhaps more importantly, to a place card bearing a familiar name.

She barely finishes chewing before Angie smacks her in the shoulder. "Almost ten years later and you’re _still_ mooning over Dreamy Daniel?" she demands, and Peggy grabs her water glass to hide her guilty flush. Angie, predictably, rolls her eyes. "You know, I’m probably the least qualified person in the world to hand out relationship advice, but the fact you go all googly-eyed at him every time we meet up at some stupid alumni event—"

Peggy scoffs. "I do not go googly over Daniel Sousa, thank you."

"‘Oh, goodness, Daniel, you’re looking _wonderful_ this evening,’" Angie mocks, fluffing her hair and batting her eyelashes like a flirt out of a black-and-white sitcom. "‘I tried to read up on your exploits as a big, tough, U.S. Marshal, but I couldn’t handle the suspense. Needed a cold shower and a hot toddy, and maybe not in that order.’"

She runs her hand down Peggy’s arm until her fingernails raise gooseflesh, and Peggy bats her away. "Your accent is atrocious."

"Maybe if my best friend’d float me some private lessons like she promised back during our junior year . . . " Angie intones, and Peggy smiles as she shakes her head. "And accent or no accent," Angie presses, swiping a piece of her roll, "my point still stands. You either strike while the iron’s hot or watch somebody else snatch him up. Way of the world, really."

"Spoken like the true old maid of the group," Peggy teases, and Angie promptly pokes her in the side. She smears a bit more buttered rose on her roll before sighing. "And if I’m totally honest, I’m not sure I’m interested in striking anything, iron or otherwise. I just hoped to catch up with him, that’s all."

Instead of sympathizing, possibly with the promise of charming an entire bottle of wine away from the bartender, Angie just grins. "Well, if _that’s_ all you wanted, I’ve got you covered."

"What do you—" Peggy demands, but Angie rockets out of her assigned seat before she even finishes the thought. Within seconds, she’s plucked a handful of place cards off their table and shoved them up the sleeve of her cardigan. "Angie!" Peggy hisses, but her friend dodges her hand as she waltzes over to Table Five.

While whistling a song from her latest theatrical performance, _Grease_ , no less.

Peggy groans and covers her eyes. "I don’t even know why we’re friends," she complains, "and I certainly don’t want to witness you—"

"Exacting revenge on the douchenozzle who shoves the paralegals and actresses together at a shitty table? Perish the thought." 

By the time Peggy peeks through her fingers, Angie’s already replacing the stolen cards with two new ones: one bearing the name Antoine Triplett, and one— 

She shoves away the little rush of joy she feels at seeing Daniel’s name and glances over at Angie. "Please tell me you didn’t reassign Rose and Aloysius to the other table."

Angie shoots her a truly sour look. "And force that poor man to listen to chest-thumping war stories all night? Please. I moved them down a couple seats so you can ‘catch up’ with the man of your dreams. Unkempt Ray and Unlikable Dottie each took one for the team."

Grinning, she flops back down into her chair, clearly very proud of her seating chart malfeasance, and Peggy ignores a new batch of reception arrivals to frown. "I don’t dislike Dottie," she defends.

Angie wrinkles her nose. "Yeah, well, I don’t dislike a night free of her creepy murder face." She schools her expression into a strange, almost dead-eyed stare, and Peggy rolls her eyes. "Look, English, you can like her as much as you want, but her resting bitch face freaks me out. Like she plans on eating my soul or something." She shudders. "Don’t get me wrong, she’s cute and all, but—"

"Who’s cute?" a familiar voice asks, and Angie nearly falls out of her chair as Dottie Underwood leans down between them. She tips her head in Angie’s direction, her smile kind while still just slightly vacant. All at once, Peggy understands the term _creepy murder face_. "Do you have a new girlfriend?"

"I— What?" Angie stammers. She glances helplessly at Peggy, who shrugs and reaches for her water. "Where’d that come from? On second thought, where the holy hell did _you_ come from?"

Dottie’s smile widens, and she nudges Angie’s shoulder. "From the parking lot, silly," she says, her tone almost teasing. "Walked in with Trip and a couple of the other guys you went to school with. They told me all about a new drink, with lemon and sugar. We should go order some."

Angie flinches. "I don’t know if I need a drink," she replies weakly, but Dottie simply seizes her by the wrist and tugs her up out of her chair. They stand together, gloriously mismatched—Dottie in a perfectly cut charcoal suit, Angie in her floral dress and sweater—and Peggy works hard not to grin. When she fails, Angie scowls at her. "You just wait," she warns.

"Well, of course she should. Somebody needs to watch your bag." Angie rolls her eyes at Dottie’s obliviousness, but the other woman just smiles. "You want anything, Peg? Ray said he thinks they have about a dozen beers on tap."

"And none of them stronger than a Miller Lite, I’m sure," Peggy replies, waving off Dottie’s confused blink. "Don’t worry about me. I’ll run up Jack’s tab later this evening."

Dottie grins warmly as she drags a scowling Angie away. _Take one for the team,_ Peggy mouths after them, and she laughs when her friend flips her off.

"Well, that’s new," a familiar voice remarks, and Peggy—

As much as she hates to admit it, even to herself, Peggy swears that her heart stops when she glances over her shoulder and sees Daniel.

"Well, look who finally decided to grace us with his presence!" she teases as she rises (or maybe leaps) out of her seat to wrap him up in an enormous hug. He rolls his eyes, but he also leans his crutch against the table to pull her close, his face nearly in her hair. "I was afraid Trip and Ray might've had their wicked way with you. Or, worse, conned you into pre-gaming the reception."

Daniel snorts, his mouth dangerously close to her ear. "The day I share a flask with Ray Krzeminski is the day hell freezes over."

"And given that a woman voluntarily married Jack Thompson this morning, we're at least halfway there." 

He chuckles at that, the sound reverberating through his chest, and Peggy fights against her full-body urge to hold him closer. But even eleven years after their first meeting, holding Daniel feels like a revelation, and she revels in the scent of his aftershave before finally backing away. They lose a beat staring at one another—him in a dark suit, her in her usual "wedding of a college friend" dress—before he says, "You look great, for the record. A real sight for sore eyes."

"And you clean up quite nicely." He huffs and glances down, his expression suddenly bashful, and she squeezes his arm. "We're sharing a table with the usual suspects, as I understand it, so if you're interested in a drink—"

"Miss Carter!" someone shouts, and Peggy twists away from Daniel just in time to be swept into one of Ana Jarvis's bone-crushing bear hugs. She squeaks involuntarily, the breath nearly crushed right out of her chest. 

A few feet away, Edwin cringes. _Sorry_ , he mouths.

Just as she's done for most of her adult life, Peggy weakly waves him off—not, of course, that her assailant notices. "Mister Jarvis told me he did not think you would come to this wedding," Ana chides as she finally backs away, her hands firmly planted on Peggy's upper arms. "He said he thought you'd be busy with your work."

"I was merely trying to manage your expectations," Edwin defends. When his wife shoots him a truly sour glance, he tugs at his waistcoat. "After the incident at Ray's wedding, I thought it prudent—"

"I am still in no hurry to forgive either of you for Ray's wedding," Ana replies haughtily, crossing her arms over her chest. Daniel, well aware of her potential wrath, hides his laugh behind his hand. "Either way," she continues, glancing back to Peggy, "I am very glad to see you here and not working. Especially since you are once again with your Daniel."

"He's not—" Peggy attempts, but Ana ignores her as she forces Daniel into his very own suffocating death-hug. Daniel glances at her over Ana's tiny shoulder, his expression simultaneously helpless and amused, and Peggy feels a red-hot flush spread across her cheeks. She flashes him a fond smile before turning away, ostensibly to destroy another roll.

Really, she needs a moment to recover from her ridiculous schoolgirl crush.

"You know, as much as Ana pushes the outer boundaries of polite conversation, she makes a rather good point."

Rolling her eyes, Peggy tosses a sideways glance Edwin only to be gifted with a glimpse at his irritatingly smug little smile. She wrinkles her nose. "Ten seconds into the wedding reception, and you're already needling me. Might be a new world record." He quirks an eyebrow as she grabs a second roll out of the bread basket and tears it in two. "And since I know you are a mere heartbeat away from pressing the matter," she continues, "I'll have you know that this conversation requires a glass of wine and at least two pieces of wedding cake."

"That can be arranged." She narrows her eyes, and he raises his hands, the very picture of mock innocence. "I know you like to blame the current state of affairs on your imperfect timing," he says, "but frankly, that excuse is nearing its expiration date. And given that we're once again all in the same place at the same time—"

Peggy slams her roll down on her bread plate. "I think I need a drink," she declares, purposefully loud enough to break into Daniel's conversation with Ana. She ignores Edwin's disapproving sigh and eye-roll—a combination that reminds her of a long-suffering secondary school teacher—and capitalizes on the distraction by looping her arm in Daniel's. "Dottie was telling me about a new drink you and Trip'd discovered. Lemon and sugar? I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect I need at least seven of them."

Daniel immediately grins. "No offense, Carter, but I'm pretty sure seven of anything'd knock you on your ass."

She tosses her hair over her shoulder. "Given that you've not been able to drink me under the table since junior year, I find that terribly unlikely." He laughs, his whole face brightening, and she elbows him in the ribs. "Come, let's go enjoy a free drink while you update me on all the hearts you've been breaking as a special administrator to the U.S. Marshal service."

He shakes his head. "That'll be a short conversation," he warns, but he grabs his crutch to walk her over to the bar.

Five minutes later, Peggy pauses in the middle of a story about Tony Stark's ridiculous obsession with a new time-management cell phone game to discover Edwin staring at her from the far end of the bar.

_No more excuses_ , he mouths.

She rolls her eyes and turns back to Daniel.

 

==

 

"You officially have it ten times worse than I ever imagined."

Peggy stops shoveling red velvet cake into her mouth to glance across the table, but Rose simply smirks at her, fully the cat who caught the canary but with a lot more teeth and much sharper claws. Peggy swallows without really tasting the cream cheese frosting. "What?" she asks.

"You know what," Rose replies.

"No, I don't." A few seats away, Angie and Edwin exchange very solemn glances, and Peggy resists the urge to flick her last butter flower at one of them. "Please, enlighten me."

Rose sighs. "Playing dumb doesn't really suit you, Peg."

Peggy snorts and reaches for her wine glass. "Playing dumb requires a certain level of prior knowledge, and as we just established—"

"Maybe she really _is_ confused, Rose," Aloysius cuts in helpfully. Rose shoots her boyfriend a sharp glance, and he adjusts his collar uncomfortably. "I'm just saying, if she says she doesn't know, maybe she doesn't. I mean, I don't know what you're talking about." He pauses, his brow furrowing. "At least, I don't _think_ I know."

Rose rolls her eyes. "We only talked about it the whole way here," she mutters, and he blinks at her a second time.

At her spot next to Edwin, Ana sighs like a gale-force wind, but the sound of brash laughter across the hall stops her from complaining about Peggy's willful ignorance. Over at the bar, Jack thumps Trip on the back and downs his third or fourth shot of the evening while a group of other young men cheer him on. They're a raucous bunch, but good-natured, all red-faced and slightly drunk as they laugh together.

Daniel included, Peggy realizes, and something hot and itchy crawls up the side of her neck. Whether the light or the alcohol, he's glowing and gorgeous, and she completely forgets about her cake as she studies him. 

At least, until Angie pokes her in the side with an incredibly sharp fingernail. "You see the problem here, English?" she demands despite Peggy's immediate and quite serious glare. "Every time we meet up at one of these things, you spend half your time catching up with Daniel and the rest of it like _this_."

She gestures in the vague direction of the bar, and Peggy rolls her eyes. "I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary."

Angie scowls, only a heartbeat away from arguing, but Ana holds up a placating hand. "No, Peggy is right," she says. "She's being the exact same hopeless romantic we all met during university."

Peggy huffs and stabs another chunk of cake. "I am _not_ —"

"When Edwin returned after his semester abroad, who helped research immigration policies simply because he had a new girlfriend in Hungary he wished to bring over?" When Peggy rolls her lips together, Ana crosses her arms. "You helped him call offices, no? Fill out paperwork? And that is without mentioning how you drove him to the airport three hours before writing an exam, just because he needed to pick me up."

Peggy flicks her gaze over to where Edwin's attempting to hide behind his whiskey. "I thought we agreed to never tell her any of that," she says.

"Yes, well," he replies after clearing his throat, "Ana and I endeavor to avoid secrets in our relationship." He fiddles with his tie, and Peggy cocks her head to the side. "Also, she is tremendously good at interrogation."

Ana smiles and pats his hand. "Teach for long enough, and you will learn the same."

"And that's not even counting the whole thing with Gloria," Angie chimes in. Peggy groans, barely resisting the urge to cover her face with her hands, but her friend just leans her elbows on the table. "Junior year girlfriend," she explains to a riveted Ana and Aloysius. "Townie, friendly as anybody you ever met, and a _real_ looker, but with a crazy overprotective mother. And every time she called looking for Gloria, English here covered for us."

"Only because you insisted on giving me her mobile while you made out with her!" Peggy protests.

Angie shrugs and reaches for her drink. Across the table, Aloysius tips his head expectantly at Rose. She pauses, fork halfway to her mouth. "What? You think I needed help with my college relationships?"

Edwin snorts. "Help remembering their names, perhaps," he mutters, which inspires a terrifyingly self-satisfied smile from Rose.

Peggy sighs and sets down her glass. "As much as I'm enjoying this little trip down memory lane," she informs the lot of them, "nothing changes the fact that Daniel and I are just old friends who enjoy one another's company." They all turn to her, their expressions ranging from curious to truly nosy, and she bites back another long-suffering eye-roll. "I know you all mean well, but Daniel and I— We're not meant to be some paperback love story. We're just . . . " The words escape her for a moment, and she shrugs. "Ships passing in the night, I suppose. Always on our way to another destination."

"Okay, but why?" Aloysius asks. The note of actual concern in his voice catches Peggy completely off guard, and she blinks at him. "You guys talked all through dinner. I'm pretty sure the only reason you stopped talking was because the groom collected up his work friends. Why don't you just admit you like each other and do something about it?"

"Because—" Peggy starts, but for some reason, the rest of the sentence sticks in the back of her throat. In all honesty, she still struggles with that question every time she runs into Daniel, her mind traveling back to humid football tailgates and long conversations like university never quite ended. Because even now, an entire lifetime from the truly rubbish philosophy class where they'd first met, Daniel reminds Peggy of all the endless possibilities she believed in back during her college days, when every morning felt like a sparkling fresh start.

Except a few weeks after graduation, Peggy'd flown back home to help bury her brother, the victim of an unexpected assault on his patrol in Afghanistan. And a few months after that, just as the haze of grief had begun to clear, Daniel'd moved to Georgia to start training for the U.S. Marshals Service.

Michael's death had stolen most of her dreamy optimism, and after a year of graduate school, her ambition had followed right behind it.

And Daniel's job, well, that'd waltzed away with a chunk of his good humor and even more of his leg.

Aware of her friends' continued, prying stares, Peggy shakes her head. "Our lives changed," she finally says, toying with the stem of her glass. "No matter what rosy futures I dreamt up ten years ago, the fact remains—"

Groaning, Angie tosses up her hands. "Shit, English, nobody's asking you to marry the guy!" she exclaims. "Stop trying to work out the end game and just ask him to grab a cup of coffee."

"Or dinner," Ana suggests.

Aloysius nods eagerly. "Or to play chess in the park."

Rose rolls her eyes hard enough that Peggy feels it in her teeth, but Edwin simply rests his arms on the table. "In other words," he advises, "you should pursue this line of inquiry before it is no longer available to you." 

Peggy snorts. "Are you a detective now, Mister Jarvis?"

He shrugs. "It's remarkable how much detective work and cyber security have in common," he says sagely, and Peggy almost laughs. "Besides, as Mister Stane often says—"

"Stane?" Aloysius blurts around a shockingly large mouthful of cake. "As in Obadiah Stane? Like, Stark Industries—"

"The very same," Edwin interrupts, holding up a hand. He must notice Aloysius's immediate, starry-eyed wonder, too, because a slow-burn smile spreads across his face. "You know, I have actually met Mister Tony Stark. In person."

Peggy rolls her eyes. "You act as though he's some unapproachable celebrity instead of an ordinary narcissist with—" 

"And," Edwin continues, waving her off, "I have reason to believe that he named his cat after me."

Aloysius's mouth falls open until he resembles a recently taxidermied fish, but Ana just tosses her napkin onto the table. "I am not suffering through the cat story again, Edwin."

Her husband huffs and sits up a little straighter. "I just find it rather convenient—"

"No cats!" Ana insists, pushing her chair back as Edwin wrinkles his nose in distaste. "We are going to dance now. Because otherwise, I will have to hear about tuxedo cats all evening, and I did not come to a wedding for that." She rises gracefully and holds out a hand. "Edwin?"

He spares a sideways glance to Aloysius, who continues to hang expectantly on his every mundane word about the Stark family until Ana clears her throat. Reluctantly, Edwin sighs and pushes back his chair. "Dancing sounds wonderful, darling," he says, and twines their fingers together.

He also glares at Angie's snickering, but that feels like business as usual.

By the time the Jarvises stake their claim on the dance floor, Rose and Aloysius excuse themselves as well, wandering over to the bar to drain Jack of a few more hard-earned dollars. Peggy pokes at the last of her cake as they depart, well aware that her gaze keeps drifting between them and the gaggle of federal agents over at the bar. Jack's wife stands among them now, his arm around her waist as they laugh at what promises to be one of Ray's racier college conquest stories, and something deep in Peggy's chest constricts. She remembers a moment like this one at Edwin and Ana's wedding, and at Ray's before that, when these delicate old friendships felt as infinite and eternal as they had ten years earlier.

"Look, I get where you're coming from," Angie says quietly, and Peggy glances away at the bar to find her long-time best friend studying her. When she tries to smile, Angie reaches out and squeezes her hand. "You guys almost ended up like Ed and Ana until you lost your brother and he lost his leg. But you can't let all that past baggage stop you. Not when you want him as bad as you do."

Peggy raises an eyebrow. "Like you and—"

"Oh, I am _not_ drunk enough for that conversation," Angie interrupts, and Peggy laughs as she quickly slugs the rest of her drink. They linger for just a moment, Angie's hand on hers, before her friend shoves her chair away from the table. "C'mon, English. Let's dance instead of acting like depressing old maids."

They dance together for what feels like minutes and hours at the same time, Angie bouncing around like a parody of her college self and Peggy laughing until her ribs ache. They spin and shimmy to pop songs, attempt clumsy swing-dance moves to a wide variety of classic rock tunes, and even sway together to a few painfully slow ballads before Edwin finally cuts in for a dance of his own. Peggy loses her shoes somewhere during the Electric Slide and her hose shortly after the YMCA, but even when her hair turns limp and her dress feels sticky, she's still laughing.

By the time the playlist switches over to the love theme from _Dirty Dancing_ , most of the couples have reunited, leaving her to stand on the sidelines and watch—

She nearly chokes on her water when she realizes that the small bundle of woman in Dottie Underwood's long arms is in fact one Angela Martinelli. She wipes her mouth before flashing her friend two enthusiastic thumbs up.

Angie, predictably, scowls and flips her off.

"Looks like we're the only ones without partners," a familiar voice comments, and Peggy swallows around a sudden surge of _want_ as she glances over at Daniel. He smiles almost bashfully. "I'm not much of a dancer, but I'm willing to try if you are."

Peggy huffs half a laugh. "I seem to remember a number of parties tending to contradict that statement."

He snorts and shakes his head. "College was a long time ago," he reminds her, but he holds out his hand anyway.

They stay to the edge of the dance floor, their bodies falling into an easy back-and-forth motion that reminds Peggy of every dance she attended back in secondary school. But Daniel's hand feels warm and broad in the small of her back, and when she presses in close enough to smell his aftershave, her eyes flutter shut without her permission. She basks in him, in the strength and certainty of his touch, and soon, even the imperfect cadence of their dance feels like floating.

"I missed you, Peggy," he says somewhere near the end of the song, his breath tickling her ear. "I never know how to tell you, but I did. And now, with this whole Los Angeles thing happening—"

Reality rushes into Peggy like a freight train, and she jerks back hard enough that they both almost stumble. "With what?" she asks, and he cringes at the rough edge to her tone. "Daniel, I'm sorry, but I don't know what—"

"Our chief's sending me to Los Angeles on Monday for a special assignment." A vaguely seasick feeling washes over her, but Daniel simply glances down at their feet. "Jack keeps calling it six months of sun, surf, and paperwork, but it's a chance to sort of prove myself. Maybe even score a promotion, which, after everything . . . "

He gestures weakly to his leg, and Peggy rolls her lips together. For a moment, awareness of Daniel surges into overdrive, and she feels every place their bodies touch, from the hand on her back to the way their chests brush when they breathe. Finally, though, she curls her fingers against his suit coat. "Congratulations," she says. "That's quite an honor."

He snorts and shakes his head. "Not when it feels like I'm breaking up the whole gang for the first time since I left for training. I just—" He pauses to rub his neck, and Peggy glances away. "But look, I'm not leaving forever. Given how often we get together, you guys'll barely notice I'm gone."

"Well, _that_ is most certainly a lie," she retorts. He huffs, nearly rolling her eyes, and she forces herself to breathe around the lump in her throat. "But in the interest of full disclosure, I had planned on asking you to dinner next weekend. But seeing as you'll be in Los Angeles by then . . . "

Something in Daniel's expression shifts as she trails off, and he stares at her for a full three or four seconds before his gaze drifts away again. "It soften the blow if I tell you I'd love to?" he asks quietly.

She smiles and shakes her head. "Not entirely," she admits, "but I appreciate the effort."

 

==

 

An hour later, after Jack's left for his honeymoon and the party consists mostly of older relatives and drunk U.S. Marshals, Angie drops down into her chair and swings her feet up onto Peggy's lap. "You lose Mister Wonderful already?" she asks, reaching for a stranger's abandoned water glass.

Peggy snorts and studies the half-inch of scotch left waiting in her tumbler. She barely remembers ordering the drink, never mind the two before it, but it warms the parts of her chest and belly that ache since that last dance with Daniel. 

A dance that'd ended with a kiss on the cheek and a promise to e-mail regularly, the same as when they'd parted ways almost a decade earlier.

"Hey, English," Angie needles, poking Peggy with her bare toes. "I lost track of you and pretty much everybody else after weird Dot kidnapped me into seven slow dances. How'd it go with Sousa?"

Shrugging, Peggy shakes her head. "Like I said before, we always had rubbish timing," she replies, and tosses back the rest of her drink.

**Author's Note:**

> In this universe, the main SSR men (Thompson, Sousa, Dooley) are U.S. Marshals, as is Antoine Triplett from _Agents of SHIELD_. Sousa now works as an administrator since his injury. Otherwise, jobs are as follows:
> 
> Edwin Jarvis: cyber security for Stark Industries (who has only met Tony once and has no reason to actually think the cat is named after him, thank you very much)  
> Ana Jarvis: private school Latin teacher  
> Rose Roberts: probation officer  
> Angie Martinelli: actress  
> Aloysius Samberly: Suffolk County crime lab technician  
> Dottie Underwood: the Barney Stinson of the group (no one knows exactly what her job is, just that she wears a suit and talks about guns with some worrying frequency)  
> Ray Krzeminski: former U.S. Marshal now working private security
> 
> Peggy, Sousa, Thompson, Krzeminski, Jarvis, Rose, and Angie all attended college together. Ana and Aloysius became part of the group because of their significant others; Trip joined in because of work. And no one knows how Dottie became part of the crew, but she shows up constantly. (She is the reason Peggy twitches whenever Steve or Bucky refer to their daughter as "Dottie.")
> 
> Also, I recently answered [MPU Friday questions](http://the-wordbutler.tumblr.com/tagged/motion-practice-friday) and posted [the Sua Sponte playlist](http://the-wordbutler.tumblr.com/post/142435341582/mpu-playlist-sua-sponte) on tumblr. Just, you know. For the record. (Please note: the MPU Friday tag will eventually take you to really old questions. I'm not sure you'll mind, though.)


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